Bad Blood
by lenina20
Summary: After the witches kill Klaus's unborn child, Caroline finds him in New Orleans.


**So, while I work in Chapter 15 of Mardi Gras - here I leave you a little one-shot about the baby situation in The Originals. I hope you'll like my version of events, and thank you for reading as always**!

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**Bad Blood**

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"What are you doing here, Caroline?"

She finds him in his studio, just as she was expecting to, before she entered the house and let herself be carried across the wide corridors of his mansion, guided by the scent of musk and dried blood and acrylic. He's standing with his back turned to the door, his eyes somewhere far away across the dark swamps glistening outside beneath the pearl-coloured moonshine. There's no lowball glass in his hand, no amber liquid catching the dim lights of the darkened room. He's standing with his hands hanging by his sides, a poster for passivity and inaction, except for the rough edge in his voice as he questions her, almost angry, with no desire to turn around and look at her face.

It's only been a few month. A blink in his eternity. Perhaps, he hasn't had the time to miss her yet.

That is okay. Caroline walks towards him anyway, determined to look and move and sound unafraid, even if her knees are buckling under the weight of her dread, terrified as she is of the heartbreak she doesn't want to find in his eyes, if he ever turns his face to look at her.

"I heard what happened." Rebekah made sure that the news reached Caroline, without calling her directly to tell her, _there's no baby anymore_. She bites her bottom lip to keep the trembling of her words at bay, before she adds, her voice a thread, "I'm sorry."

His shoulders clench for an instant before he rolls them, crossing his arms over his chest, like that can defend him from her approach. His voice comes out firm, hard, dead-cold. "I'm not. Certain kinds of abominations are never supposed to be born."

Caroline balls her fists, traps her shaking fingers against the palm of her hand to resist the urge to reach out to him, press her hands flat against his back and comfort him. Because he means the child and he means _himself_; his own particular breed of monster, dead and undead at the same time. A beast and a walking, bleeding corpse.

He was cursed for a thousand years so the balance of nature could be kept.

How could they all be such fools, to ever think that this time the witches would allow him—?

"It could have been a wonderful thing," Caroline breathes, her voice still lower than a murmur, her eyes lost with his, somewhere far and dark over the silver-coloured swamp. "You would have kept him safe and protected, away from _your_ world. He would have never known the darkness, would have never suffered the curse of the moon. Would have lived and died as a human, and your family would have walked this earth again, alive and uncursed."

It's a tragic matter, Caroline knows. It is only because the child has died unborn, that they can pretend his birth would have been a blessing—their salvation. That the child and his human progeny would have restored the balance of nature by undoing the original crime of Esther, and the five, millenary bloodlines of monsters that succeeded it. That the child would have returned the sons of Mikael and their lineage to the Eden that preceded their fall.

But if the child had been born—

The dark of side nature can only imagine the kinds of horror the witches had been preventing, when they removed him from his mother's womb.

The thought makes Caroline's entrails twitch in pain and terror, and so she barely dares ask, "How's Hayley?"

She'd be lying if she said that the bitter laugh that breaks out of Klaus's throat catches her by surprise. It shocks her, though, that at last he turns around to face her, his eyes narrowed in what looks like an expression of genuine curiosity. "How would I know?"

Caroline makes sure to keep al traces of judgement out of her voice when she sighs. "She just lost the child she was carrying."

Klaus tilts his head, purses his lips, raises his eyes mockingly to the ceiling. "Well, then I suppose she's never been better." His expression grows serious, however, when he locks his eyes on hers. "Or do you think the wolf girl wanted to spend the rest of her mortal life stuck with me or my demon's spawn? I mean, she might not be the poster child for human compassion or selflessness, but no beast in this world deserves that kind of condemnation—"

"Stop it." Caroline fists her hands on her hipbones and takes a step forward, mindless of his overpowering scent filtering in through her heightened senses as she almost leans against his chest, half aching to embrace him, half desperate to punch him. "I'm not buying this self-loathing, self-help psych bullshit, so don't even try."

He creases his forehead, severely unimpressed by her sass. Then he exhales, and repeats, this time his eyes burning a hole in her head as he whispers, "What are you doing here, Caroline?"

She swallows, somehow taken aback by the sudden intensity of his gaze. Her voice shakes a little, but she soldiers on. "I already told you. I heard what happened, and I wanted—"

"You wanted to offer your condolences for my loss, yes, I heard you." His lips twitch evilly, and his eyes gleam with maliciousness. "Problem is, love, you are not sorry that the witches killed the child so, out of our shared interest in not wasting each other's time and patience, I'll ask you one last time." He pauses, for dramatic effect, and moves even closer. Their chests bump together, and immediately his hands settle over hers on her hips, drawing her in until there pressed together toe-to chest. "What are you doing here?"

Her chest swells with deoxygenated air as the pain constricting her lungs escalates morphing into searing anger the sharper he whets his smile. It's pure, blinding rage directed at him and at herself, that washes off the trembling of her words as she narrows her eyes at him. "You called me when you found out, remember? You said, all you could think about was me, yet you never mentioned what was really happening. You made me believe nothing had changed—"

He jerks her against him, the move a clear declaration of intentions. "Nothing has changed, Caroline."

She clenches her eyes shut, shivers as his hot breath brushes over her lips. She shakes her head and vows to keep going as if she hadn't even heard him. "—and all this time back home, all _I_ could think about was _you_, and how sad you sounded when you said, that _maybe one day_—"

He cuts her off with a kiss.

She melts and shudders, and as hot, burning desire melts her anger into tears, she parts her lips, gasping as his tongue rolls against the roof of her mouth. She struggles against him to free her hands and fist them in the soft cotton of his Henley, feeling as her fingernails tear into his skin through the shirt, with as much bone-chilling desperation as he closes his arms around her waist, snaring her in a silent, iron-clad promise.

She's here now, and the hope for a brand new world has been destroyed; crushed and buried in a mess of black blood and Voodoo magic. So they're back to the chase. Only now—

—they've run out of reasons and excuses to run from this. So _who's cursed now_?

He will never let _her_ go.

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**Thank you for reading! Mardi Gras Chapter 15 will be up soon ;)**


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